The proletariat never existed-but it had a profound effect on modern German culture and
society. As the most radicalized part of the industrial working class the proletariat embodied
the critique of capitalism and the promise of socialism. But as a collective imaginary the
proletariat also inspired the fantasies desires and attachments necessary for transforming
the working class into a historical subject and an emotional community. This book reconstructs
this complicated and contradictory process through the countless treatises essays memoirs
novels poems songs plays paintings photographs and films produced in the name of the
proletariat. The Proletarian Dream reads these forgotten archives as part of an elusive
collective imaginary that modeled what it meant-and even more important how it felt-to claim
the name proletarian with pride hope and conviction. By emphasizing the formative role of the
aesthetic the eighteen case studies offer a new perspective on working-class culture as a
oppositional culture. Such a new perspective is bound to shed new light on the politics of
emotion during the main years of working-class mobilizations and as part of more recent
populist movements and cultures of resentment. Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in
Germanic Languages and Literatures 2018
